Ross-Lee was born to Ernestine (née Moten; January 27, 1916 – October 9, 1984) and Fred Ross, Sr. (July 4, 1920 – November 21, 2007) and raised in the housing projects of Detroit. She is the eldest of six children, including sister Diana Ross. Ross-Lee attended Wayne State University for her undergraduate education. She was married during her junior year, which prolonged graduation by a year.[6] Barbara Ross had begun her pre-medical studies at Wayne State University in 1960, during the growth of the civil rights movement. At that time, few medical schools offered admission to minority students and neither federal nor private funding was available to help support students from low-income families. At Wayne State, her pre-medical advisor did not believe women should be physicians, and so she declined to authorize Ross's request to study human anatomy as her major.[5] Ross instead graduated with a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry in 1965 and joined the National Teacher Corps, a federal program, in which she could earn a degree while teaching simultaneously in the Detroit public school system.[7] After completing the program in 1969, a new educational opportunity arose when Michigan State University opened a school of osteopathic medicine in Pontiac, a Detroit suburb, to which Ross-Lee applied and was accepted.[1][8][2]{[9] After opening her own private practice in family medicine, she later remarried to Edmond Beverly, who worked for the Michigan public schools. Together, they raised Ross-Lee's five children.[6]
In 1993, Ross-Lee became the first African American woman dean of a United States medical school. She remained dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine of Ohio University until 2001.[10] During her tenure there, she reformulated the entire course of study, and drafted a women's curriculum, earning a reputation as a "change agent."[1] Ross-Lee led the American Osteopathic Association's Health Policy Fellowship program and the Training in Policy Studies program.[11]
In 2018, Ross-Lee was appointed the founding dean and chief academic officer[16] of the Minnesota College of Osteopathic Medicine, Minnesota's first osteopathic medical school,[17] which was to be located in Gaylord, Minnesota.[18][19] Projects for the college was later disbanded[20] to offer resources for the establish of the Kansas Health Sciences Center, whose Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine was granted candidate status by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation as of 2021.[21]
^American Osteopathic Association (2009), "Physicians, Osteopathic", in Mullner, Ross M. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Health Services Research, Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE, doi:10.4135/9781412971942.n321, ISBN978-1-4129-5179-1
